Tuesday, February 2, 2016

Five or Ten Quotes from Thomas Merton...

A couple days ago it would have been Thomas Merton's 101st birthday. Thus I briefly read some of his classic, Seeds of Contemplation, and came across some of his quotes, on this blog and elsewhere. The second-to-last quote below has been hanging on my desk on a scrawled piece of scrap paper for at least the past ten years. This said, some of these quotes are a re-post from previous posts on Merton. After reading them last evening I felt inspired to post them again. Here they are, along with a bit of information.

Priest, mystic, monk, activist, writer, poet, and artist, Fr. Merton was a true renaissance man. He was friends with Thich Nhat Hanh, and the Dalai Lama, and a contemporary of Martin Luther King, Jr. Before his untimely death he penned a huge number of books pertaining to spirituality, poems, artwork, and an incredible and moving autobiography.
His work continues to touch countless souls...including the one typing
these words. I love the opening line to his autobiography, the Seven
Story Mountain..."On the last day of
January 1915, under the sign of the Water Bearer, in a year of a
great war, and down in the shadows of some French mountains on the
borders of Spain, I came into the world." Thomas Merton was born 100 years ago this month; to read more about him click here or here. To read the soulful and moving prayer that is attributed to him, and thus is called the Prayer of Thomas Merton, click here.

"Peace demands the most heroic labor and the most
difficult sacrifice. It demands greater heroism than war. It demands
greater fidelity to the truth and a much more perfect purity of
conscience."

"Pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real."

"Just remaining quietly in the presence of God,
listening to Him, being attentive to Him, requires a lot of courage and
know-how."

"Every moment and every event of every man's life on earth plants something in his soul."

"A life is either all spiritual or not spiritual at
all. No man can serve two masters. Your life is shaped by the end you
live for. You are made in the image of what you desire."

"Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time."

"I cannot make the universe obey me. I cannot make
other people conform to my own whims and fancies. I cannot make even my
own body obey me."

"We stumble and fall constantly even when we are most
enlightened. But when we are in true spiritual darkness, we do not even
know that we have fallen."

"The man of faith who has never experienced doubt is not a man of faith."